Most people know that they need to lift weight build muscles. However many just want to have nice muscle tone and an attractive but not too muscular body as they do not want big muscles. So they just lift light weights with high repetitions. Well, it is not going to work. To have nice muscle tone, you will have to build some muscles right? So you will have to lift heavy to force your muscles to grow. Once you are satisfied with the size of your muscles, you will then need to cut your body fats for your muscles to show up well and that means nice muscle tone.

You need to have a solid commitment and knowledge to get nice muscle tone and build an attractive muscular body. Here are some muscle building tips. Before you commence weight training, remember to warm up and as well as doing some stretching exercises.

•Train Muscle With Free Weights

Machines will have its uses, but for a start, concentrate on free weights. That means work almost exclusively with barbells and dumb bells. Free weights recruit many stabilizing muscles for balance and control. That means you will work a lot more muscle parts other than the intended ones. That will give rise to little bumps, striations and definitions all over your body instead of one huge lump of muscle on your intended muscle. Because of the extra stimulant created, your muscles grow faster too. Why else do you think all professional body builders almost exclusively use free weights?

•Train With Compound Exercises

Incorporate as many compound exercises as possible to your routines. Compound exercises are exercises that involve 2 or more joint movements. Because they utilize more joints, which means greater muscle mass are involved. Greater muscle mass means heavier weights. Heavier weights mean encouragement of greater muscle growth. More muscle growth means more tone to your muscles.

You must train intensively for your muscle to grow. Try to do more reps or add more weight than the previous session or else your muscles will think (actually muscles don\’t think, they adapt), ‘Ah… we\’ve done that. Nothing new, so no need to grow bigger and stronger.’ That being the case, you will wreck your chances of attaining an attractive muscular body.

Because of this, it is important that every time you train hard, you give your body time to recover as it has suffered strains and actually sustained many small scarring. Contrary to popular belief, your muscles grow when you rest, especially when you sleep and not in the gym. So sleep at least 8 hours a day. Also, do not train everyday or work the same muscle group more than once or twice a week. If your training was vigorous enough, do no more than an hour per session.

Try not to do cardio work on the same day as your weight lifting work. In fact, during the muscle building phase, you should do less cardio work as aerobic exercises burn muscles. You can increase your cardio work at cutting body fat phase, so as to lose body fat in order for your muscle tone to show up nicely.

•Technique And Form

This is the most neglected fundamental of bodybuilding. Everywhere, everyday, you will see people using wrong forms and techniques. This not only compromises your growth, it will also make you susceptible to injuries… sometimes even permanently putting you out of the gym.

Wrong form occurs usually when people try to lift weights that are too heavy, whether out of vanity or ignorance. As a guide, always lift with strict focus on the muscle you intend to build for that exercise. Feel it contract and extend. Lift the weights deliberately and slowly. Never ever swing your weights up especially when doing bicep curls or the military press.

•To Build Muscles Fast You Must Perform Lower Body Exercises!

This is what most people don\’t realize. Your lower body makes up 60-70of your musculature. If you don\’t train them, not only will you look spider-legged, your entire body will not grow as quickly and as large. Don\’t think that you can hide those skinny limbs in pants! Most people do not train their legs because squats, dead lifts and lunges can be very grueling exercises. But it is precisely because of such intensity that you will produce more growth hormones when you sleep and overall muscular development is stimulated. Your body shape will also be more balanced and therefore more attractive.

Do read up more to understand how your muscles work and then work on it so that in no time you will be a proud owner of a well tone attractive muscular body.

The physical fitness industry is a multi-billion dollar business but that can be a bit of a liability to the gym and the paying customers. Often the gym’s management doesn’t realize or doesn’t care that overcrowding is not in their best interest or their customers. The problems can be clients wanting to work out on a certain machine but finding that other people are always on them.

Nobody wants challenges at the gym–it’s hard enough to talk yourself into going in the first place. Then once you get there you end up waiting to use the machines you paid a membership fee to use, but can’t! Why put yourself through all that insanity and frustration when there is a better, healthier way to burn fat and lose that belly fat without suffering needlessly. There are many programs available that will make your home a gym without all the expensive equipment. But exercise is not the sole answer to getting a healthy looking body; diet also plays a big factor.

First of all, you do not have to starve yourself (diet) to burn fat, and in fact if you do diet/starve yourself- the problem will become compounded. Fasting diets cause your body to save itself from danger. Without nutrients available your immune system (your body’s military) will weaken making it less able to defend your body. Starving yourself is like taking the body’s military offline. When that happens the indigenous cancer cells in your body (we all have them but our immune system keeps them from breeding out of control.) Keeping your immune system perfect is vital for your health as well as losing weight. Starving yourself makes your body think it’s in trouble compelling it to only burn the fat needed to get by while storing the rest of the fat. This mode kicks in by instinct thinking your food supply is diminishing, time to save the fat and any other food source for later.

On the other hand, if your body has too much to eat and doesn’t get enough exercise to burn off everything you’ve consumed, the body will store the excess as fat. The trick is to eat 6-8 times a day, which is great news for some people. But keep those meals you eat should be small portions; a portion is the size of the inside of our hand or palm. Certain foods can help drastically in the fat burning process based on how they affect and improve the body’s synergy–including the functioning of immune system, speeding up the metabolism (by eating 6-8 times a day instead of 3 big, often overpowering meals), more vegetables and fruits with lean meats and fish. Eating preservative rich, highly processed foods, often evident by the packaging or the drive thru window. Too much fast food is counterproductive to your goals of losing weight.

As far as exercise goes, you don’t have to spend hours and hours at the gym to get ample exercise to burn fat. In fact if you simply eat smaller, healthier meals, reduce or remove all processed/preservative rich foods, drink plenty of water and get enough fiber in your diet–you will lose weight.

You can spend forty-five minutes three times a week exercising with weights and doing aerobics twice a week, running or even a brisk walk, depending on your physical condition. If you can’t run, then walk, just make sure you’re power walking–science has discovered that walking without effort doesn’t burn many calories. Adding some brisk arm swinging will help get the fat burning. The main thing is to move that body, just put your body in motion and as the law states “a body in motion tends to stay in motion.”

Get that heart to pumping and the muscles moving. You should feel some burn and that’s good, but don’t overdo it when you first start out and be careful with form. No need to strain your tendons or your joints. Also be sure to pay attention to the exercise illustrations on an exercise video or in a book if you’re using one. Good exercise books are great for tips and efficient exercises that target areas for fat burning. Make sure you follow their form rules as this will protect you from injury and assure optimal results.

You should create a log, whether in a ledger book, notebook, or even on your computer using a text editor or spread sheet program to track your results. This will point out where your weaknesses are and show you what to improve. You can see just how much you’ve done and how much more you need to do to reach your goals.

For example, when you lift weights, write down how many reps you’ve done and how many sets. A rep is how many times you lift the weights and a set is how many of each exercise you’ve done. So if I lift the weights twelve times in a bicep curl, and then I stop and rest for two minutes and lift the weights ten more times, then I’ve done two sets of 12 reps and 10 reps. By lifting weights and doing aerobics, you in the process of fat burning that will continue for hours afterwards.

You also need to keep a food log. Every time you eat something, even if it was just a protein bar or a glass of water, write it down in your log. Be totally honest with your log, so you’ll be sure to see how you can improve your food intake. The idea of the food log is to make you aware of exactly what, when, how much, and even where you eat so you consciously realize how much you’re taking in each day. It is a lot like when you do your budget and write down all the little things you buy on a daily basis. Later you can look at this to figure out where all the money went.

Often we do things on auto-pilot and don’t see what we’re doing. By not monitoring your food intake, it’s easy to think you’ve just eaten a few meals when in reality you ate twice as much as needed. This causes half of the food to be in the fat burning mode as we exercise while the other half is stored as fat. By realizing what’s actually going on, you can stop over eating and thus stop adding too much fat to your body. Get into the habit of writing it down and you’ll be accountable to yourself for every bite you take.

It’s actually just common sense rules that you follow for losing weight. Eat five to six small healthy meals and exercise wisely three times a week. And most of all, keep you accountable by writing everything down. If all else fails, there are many reasonably priced resources available to point you in the right direction to regaining that healthy look. Many cost less than a month’s membership at an overcrowded gym, but provide a lifetime of simple exercises and healthy eating advice to help you reach your goals.

So get off the couch, primetime TV is done for the season! Let’s change up your life and use a half hour or more of that time to productive activities. Trust me, you will feel much better about yourself, especially when enjoying the upcoming summer season showing off the new look to your family and friends!